Stories from Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, etc.
On the flyleaf it says he's been compared to Steinbeck and Márquez!
- Hard times - Edna and Jacob (his PoV) are US farmers during the depression. Jacob thinks that their kids left because Edna was too hard on them. Edna asks their passing neighbours if their dog was stealing eggs. The neighbour slits the dog's throat. The neighbour had also returned Jacob's gift of meat earlier. Jacob sets a trap to catch the snake he suspects of being the thief. He catches the neighbours little daughter. He lets her off with a gentle warning and tells her wife it was a snake. I'd guessed the plot, but not the dog murder.
- Back of beyond - Parson owns a pawn shop in a poor farming area. Many of his customers are meth addicts. His nephew Danny is a customer. Parson knows that Danny's selling things from the family farm. He's told his brother (Danny's father) Ray, who doesn't mind. The local policeman tells Parson that Danny's into meth. Parson goes to the farm and finds Ray plus his wife Martha in a cold trailer. Danny's taken over the house for parties etc. Parson evicts him, put him and his girlfriend on a long-distance bus, and restores Danny's parents to their house. But Martha says "I'd rather be in that trailer tonight and knowing he was in this house. Knowing where he is, if he's alive or dead ... You had no right". Parson leaves them knowing that next morning they'll be more meth addicts at his shop. I like the story.
- Dead confederates - The narrator's hired by Wesley to help him dig up Confederate graves for treasure. Wesley dies digging. The narrator covers him up, sells him trove to pay his mother's medical expenses. Not much return for 30 pages.
- The Ascent - Jared, 11, finds a crashed light plane in the snow. He finds a ring on a passenger and takes it home for the classmate he loves. His parents sell it for drugs. He goes back to the plane, finds a Rolex for them. Then he returns to the plane, stays there until the cold gets to him and he thinks he's flying away.
- The woman who believed in jaguars - Ruth, driving from her mother's funeral, recalls seeing 50 years before a picture of a jaguar. She was an only child. She married, had a child who died after 4 hours, separated because of her inability to "move on". She becomes fixated by the notion that jaguars lived wild in South Carolina. She phones a zoo and arranges a visit to an expert. When there she calls the police thinking she's seen a child who's been reported missed. Mistaken identity. The animal expert tells her that 70s documents suggest the existence of wild jaguars. The expert said that flocks of parakeets used to exist. They were easily killed because when some of them were shot, the rest of the flock stayed close to the victims. After the talk she sits on a bench watching the river. She sees parakeets, buffalo, and a jaguar then lies down and falls asleep.
- Burning bright - When Marcie was widowed at about 60, the townsfolk didn't help her much. She married a quiet, much younger man and stopped going to church. During a drought someone starts fires. She suspects it's her husband. When the police question her she says he was with her when the last fire started. She prays for rain.
- Return - A soldier returns to North Carolina. He'd killed a Japanese sniper in the Phillipines - a christian maybe.
A weak piece. - Into the gorge - Widower Jesse, 68, who's never caused any trouble, goes to harvest his patch of ginseng in the National Park. His old great-aunt, senile, had died of hypothermia naked in the wood. A park-keeper catches him. He pushes him down a well. Jesse runs and tries to hide the evidence. He evades the search parties. Night falls, and it's getting cold.
- Falling star - The unskilled narrator's wife, Lynn, has started astronomy night classes, which are keeping them apart. They have a 6 year-old girl. After she leaves for classes he takes his daughter to her gran and slits his wife's tyres (and her young lecturer's too) then waits for her at home. When she returns he realises that he'll be identified as the culprit and that they'll separate. He recalls a summer's day when they were all blissfully happy together.
Doesn't work for me. - The corpse bird - Boyd was raised by superstitious farmers. He was bright, pushed at school and became an engineer - married with a little daughter. He's stressed about work. An owl has been on a nearby tree for 2 nights. Boyd knows that if it's there a third night, someone will die. It happened with his grandfather. He hears that a neighbour's daughter has a high fever. He goes round, sees the child and insists she's taken to hospital. He's told to go away. He chainsaws the tree down - he enjoys manual labour. His neighbour says he's mad. His wife calls the police and an ambulance. He goes quietly.
Too few surprises, especially once the need for logs and the chainsaw are introduced - Waiting for the end of the world - A ex-teacher (40, wife and child gone) plays in a rough club 4 times a week 7 to 2. One of his band has gone awol on drugs during a gig. By the end 2 more are incompacitated and he's the only one left. He turns his guitar up full
Not boring, but not too good. - Lincolnites - Lily had a one year old childer. She's knitting after a day of farming during the American Civil War. Her soldier husband's away. She's pregnant again. A soldier, a local man on the other side to her husband, arrives to take food and a horse. When he tries to have sex with her she calmly stabs him with her needle and continues her chores.
No
Other reviews
- William Skidelsky (gets off to an arresting start with agricultural whodunnit Hard Times. ... Another high point is Dead Confederates)
- Kirkus Review ("Back of Beyond", the collection’s standout. ...The violence in ["Hard Times" and "Lincolnites"] is sudden, deadly and over in a blink, a Rash trademark. ... Also of note are the title story, in which a widow pays a high price for staving off loneliness, and “The Corpse Bird,” which pits ancient country lore against modern medical self-assurance. )
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